Eating Crow in Amsterdam
by madame.alexandra
Summary: Amsterdam: a voicemail out of nowhere leads Gibbs to a Dutch city, and an old flame in a cafe on the canal.


_**a/n:**_ _so - I wrote this on the bus to Amsterdam (hence the title) with Flynn dead asleep right next to me - it's partially inspired by Blake Shelton's_ 'Austin'_ (weird, I know) and partly by Ziva David / Cote de Pablo's farewell episodes which, regardless of their haphazard nature in general, I thought possessed a very poignant commentary on violence (so did this season's finale, at that). _

_anyway - the setting is about 2001, think episode 'Baltimore' - Gibbs is getting divorced from Stephanie, recently hired DiNozzo, Jenny's dear John Letter still stands, etc. The Cairo time-line is slightly adjusted - so this is AU-ish, I suppose - and it completely re-vamps the Judgment Day storyline in a way (making it preventable or inevitable, depending on how you see it) - but I'm talking too much: just read. _

* * *

_Amsterdam  
2001_

* * *

In the midst of a (third) divorce, and bogged down in the _paperwork_ that came with hiring a young, hotshot agent who cared more for reenacting James Bond than learning the ins and outs of the Navy Yard, Gibbs spent his free time in blessed solitude in the basement, using the old black and white television as white noise on the nights Stephanie came 'home' to move her stuff, gradually, out and away.

He only let her oily divorce lawyer call him during work hours, and he shut that goddamn phone off the minute he got home – he went home early, now, just to be able to tune out demands – it was why DiNozzo got so oddly familiar with his house – he had to keep coming by in person to tell him there was a case, because of the lawyer-induced tendency to douse his phone in paint thinner.

Thus, it was predictable that he missed several important calls – and didn't check his voicemails, because he didn't understand what the blinking red light indicated – when Abby finally rolled her eyes and showed him how to check the messages, he had expected them to be innocuous pontifications from Stephanie or her lawyer – but he had not expected the combined three, vague voicemails to result in him on a red-eye flight to Amsterdam.

The first was slurred, clearly hazily drunken – and he clenched his jaw, almost angrily, when it hit his hears –

_Jethro – I shouldn't have written you a letter; I don't think writing is my strength … I don't think you really understand and I understand you to want – no; I want you to understand – _

And then, the second, clipped, businesslike, clear; an unfamiliar voice, subtly accented and infused with an air of reluctance, and slightly absurd in its usage of English idioms –

_I am looking for Leroy Jethro Gibbs. She has been asking for him, despite my requests that she shut her cap. I can be reached – for a short time – at the following number – _

Finally, the third: clear, resolute, almost resigned – and a familiar voice again, sober and simple –

_Jethro. I called to order a plate of crow. I've been thinking … and I'm in Amsterdam._

He might have inhaled too much sawdust and wood stain, all those nights in the basement – or maybe he was just mad – but days later, with that last voicemail echoing incessantly in his waking hours and in his fitful dreams, he dropped everything: left DiNozzo hyperventilating and under the eye of Pacci, left Stephanie half-angry, half-depressed, railing at him through legal venues – and he flew back to Europe, to a city he'd never been, to track down a woman he'd never met, because that was the number he had.

He didn't take a bag, he took a coat; he didn't know what she was thinking, so he didn't think anything at all: he left the Schiphol airport and found his way to the city Centraal Station, where a woman with a widow's peak was sitting on a bench in the sun.

"You are very lucky," she said, without introduction, without pleasantry, when he approached her, his eyes on the dark yellow headband she'd said she would use to identify herself. "That burn phone will be decommissioned tomorrow."

She meant the number he'd given him – he'd almost missed his chance by a day. He sat down, hands folded in his lap, and said nothing – he didn't think it was luck; maybe it was something more like fate: he'd find out soon enough.

"Trap," he grunted shortly.

The woman turned and looked at him, cool, calculating eyes resting on his profile.

"Who do you think I am?" she asked curtly, warily.

He grinned, and brushed his jaw with his knuckles.

"No," he drawled. "'M not sayin' you're a trap," he corrected. "The phrase, it's 'shut your trap,'" he told her, thinking of her botched voicemail. "Not cap."

Widow's peak turned up her nose slightly, and parted her lips, almost scornfully.

"Semantics," she remarked, and he turned to her, one hand braced on his knee.

"Ah, you've worked with her too long," he said grimly.

"She improves my English."

The woman stood up, slipping her hands into the back pockets of faded, dusty black jeans. Gibbs looked up at her, squinting in sunlight, wondering what the hell all of this was – a drunken message, one that made him think she was dead, and then a clear-headed one – and now, a bench in Amsterdam that would lead to –

She slipped a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to him, neatly folded. Her nail, uneven and un-manicured, pressed a half-moon indent into the whiteness.

"She is expecting _me,"_ the Israeli said – he knew, now, from her gold necklace, where she hailed from.

Gibbs raised his eyebrows, and took the paper without looking at it. He held it a moment, then unfolded it – and read the address of a Café on a foreign street. He looked back up into the sun.

"Why'd she bother callin' me, if she's gonna pass notes like a cheerleader?" he asked dryly.

"I vet anyone who contacts her. I vet anyone she is alone with."

Gibbs swallowed.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I am her control officer," the woman answered. She reached out, shook his hand almost before he knew what was happening, and took of her yellow headband, placing it in his hand as if it were a token that would give him safe passage – and she looked at the coat he'd brought with him. "My name is Ziva David. Mossad."

"They start them young at Mossad," he said dully.

She leaned closer.

"The good ones are dead by your age," she said.

He didn't have a chance to say anything else – Ziva David disappeared – and he had nothing to say to that anyway: he had only questions. Why did she need to be protected so vigilantly, why was Mossad invested – why any of this?

He stared at the piece of paper he'd been given for a long time, thought about everything that was going on at home – and he got up, and he took his time working out where he needed to go, where this little Café was located – he saw her, before he saw the place itself.

She was at a table out front, drawn away from the others scattered around her – she had on leg up in a chair, sunglasses obscuring her face, hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. He saw, even from a distance that there were ghastly, healing burns up one of her arms, and a long row of brutal stitches down the other – and he guessed, from the elevated position of her foot, that it was propped up due to injury rather than leisure.

He approached before he could get lost staring at her; he strode over with determination in his jaw and steel in his bones before he could back down, and just leave her there – like he thought she deserved – maybe because he wanted to know what she meant by calling, and maybe because seeing her there, for a moment, she looked so like she had at a restaurant in Paris that he couldn't stay away.

But that illusion was shattered when he came to a stop behind a vacant chair, and he saw her pale skin – not porcelain pale, sick pale – and the thin, starved look to her; her injuries looked worse up close: not a myriad of shockingly colorful artwork wounds, but the unmistakable marks of prolonged torture.

She tilted her head up, and her lips parted sharply. He dropped the coat in his hands on the table, and he pulled out the empty chair, and he sat down. Her chin lowered, and she looked down – he couldn't see her eyes behind those sunglasses – and she fixated on that butter-soft, taupe leather coat. She reached out, and he saw a flash of color on her wrist – but it wasn't an injury, it was something under the burns and scars; a tattoo. It hadn't been there, in Paris. He leaned forward slightly, and her hand moved, hiding the mark, and her fingers slid onto the coat, and with her other hand she reached up and pushed her sunglasses back.

"This the crow you were talkin' about?" he asked finally, his voice gruff. He pulled something out of a pocket in his jacket, and thrust it on the table – three pages of wrinkled, tattered paper with her handwriting slanting across it.

Her eyes moved rapidly; she swallowed.

"I said Amsterdam," she said finally, and when she spoke, her voice sounded tired and brittle. "I did not say where in Amsterdam. I didn't think you'd come."

At that, he threw Ziva David's yellow headband on the table, and her eyes flickered with recognition, and he watched her figure some things out – and still looking at that headband, she drew in a short breath.

"She called you when I was dying," she guessed dimly, and clutched the coat in her fingers.

She said it so flippantly. He watched her take the letter in her hand, and a sour look touched the corners of her mouth.

"She thought I wasn't going to wake up," the redhead explained. "She felt bad for telling me to shut up, in my delirium, in Cairo."

Gibbs said nothing; he didn't know what that story was – what was going on, what had happened to her? He didn't know –

"Why'm I here?" he asked her.

Her eyes darted up to his, and she leaned back gingerly, holding her letter in her lap.

"I was going to ask you that," she said quietly.

He lifted his shoulders in a harsh shrug. He didn't have an explanation, but if she wanted to be soothed or flattered with some syrup from him about how he would always be there for her, or that the sound of her voice drew him, he wasn't going to give her that – he still had moments when he hated her – he wasn't ready to tell her he missed her.

She put her thumb to her mouth, biting the nail hard. Her eyes ran slowly over the letter she'd written two years ago, her jaw clenched and unclenched tellingly. She folded it over sharply, threw it on the table.

"Bullshit," she murmured.

"You wrote it," he said bluntly; darkly.

"It's bullshit," she answered, mimicking his tone, meeting his eyes. "It's pretentious and painfully ignorant of the world. I don't know the woman who wrote that."

He studied her silently. He wanted to say – he didn't know that woman either, because the woman who had written him a cowardly letter and slipped away like smoke was not the confrontational, stalwart Jenny he had known – but he said nothing, because he wanted to hear her first.

Jenny pulled her thumb away from her mouth and winced, shifting slightly.

"That woman didn't even know herself."

Unable to resist, he tilted his head and rolled his eyes a little, and then his jaw tightened – he didn't want to hear a philosophical soliloquy; he wanted to know if he'd flown to Amsterdam on a whim for something that was worth it – something that would make sense.

"There somethin' I can help you with, Jen?" he asked sharply, a little sarcastically. "You need a mess cleaned up?"

She didn't respond to the barb.

"I don't know," she said tartly, in response to the first question. And then, to the second: "Yes."

He gave her a grim look, and ran his eyes over her.

"You tell me you had a kid, Jenny, and I swear – "

She held up her hand.

"No," she said sharply, but calmly enough that he was immediately convinced it wasn't that – and he was able to calm his heartbeat and his pounding head. "God, _no_," she murmured.

She swallowed.

"Do you know why _I'm_ here?" she asked.

He gave her a look – he didn't, and she knew damn well he was in the dark here. He hadn't heard from her in years – didn't know where she'd gone, what she was doing, who she was with.

"I'm in protective custody – Mossad," she said hollowly. "Until the people who did this," she gestured at herself, "are apprehended, dead, or incapable of identifying me – meaning, if Ziva is involved, dead – in pieces."

Gibbs leaned forward, one hand on his knee, one on the small table in front of them. A waitress sidled over warily, eyeing Jenny, and she ordered something in Dutch, then held up two fingers – two, two cappuccinos, he realized, when they arrived and then they were alone again.

"As of last night, because of two decisions I made – one of mistaken mercy, and one of guilty admission, I am suspended from NCIS pending a classified hearing – "

"Classified," he grunted shortly. "Shouldn't be tellin' me."

She gave him a resigned look.

"You were on that particular redacted mission," she said vaguely, and plunged on as she shifted and leaned forward, holding her knee almost tenderly for a moment before she sat back and reached for her cappuccino.

"I do not intend to sound like a cliché," she told him roughly, "but that is what this is – and so be it. I was dead in Cairo," she said quietly. "It was twenty-eight seconds, by Ziva's count, but it's enough to wake a girl the fuck up."

She looked mildly amused by that comment, and she took a sip of her hot coffee, waiting, perhaps, for it to sink in. He looked down at his, at the design drawn in the foam, at the steam curling off, and he looked up at the open blue sky, sun burning his eyes.

"You're alive," he remarked, still not looking at her.

"Barely," was her dry answer, and then he lowered his head.

"What happened?" he asked heavily.

"A lethal combination of traumatic, prolonged interrogation combined with snake venom and heroin," she answered bluntly. "Tortured, poisoned, and drugged."

Her hands shook.

"They asked me quite a few questions I didn't feel like answering," she said mirthlessly.

Gibbs' eyes fell to her arm – the stiches, bruises, cuts, burns. He shifted back and leaned over, taking a closer look at her leg – she wore only a light sundress, loose and light because it was comfortable, probably, but revealing, then – her foot was raw, scraped and battered up to the knee, swollen there, swollen at the ankle – and he noticed, subtly, bit marks on the insides of her legs, before she shifted the skirt of her sundress, and rustled paper, drawing his attention back.

"We were tracking the arms dealers who funnel weapons to radical groups – counter terror, since nine-eleven," she murmured quietly, eyes on her mug. "I don't like arms dealers," she stated coldly. "I have what Ziva calls 'bridge vision.'"

"Tunnel vision," Gibbs guessed.

Jenny waved her hand.

"Chasing a false lead for personal reasons, I blew a cover – my team was killed, I was taken hostage – Ziva had to clean it up."

She told the story very dully, and a thousand questions leapt to his lips – what vendetta did she have, what was she thinking? But he didn't ask; he just sat there, watching her – with a free hand, she was clutching the old Paris coat tighter and tighter, and he thought about reaching out to take her hand in his.

He didn't.

"I figured out, at some point, that I was being kept alive in connection to an arms dealer's beef with NCIS – The Russian's," she said, flicking her eyes at him.

"He's dead, Jen," Gibbs said automatically.

She knew that as well as he did – NCIS had sent Leon Vance to eliminate the threat Anatoly Zhukov posed, and when he had failed – due to unwarranted interference by Mossad, if Gibbs remembered the classified files correctly – Decker had run the control mission that sent Jenny and Gibbs in after Zhukov and his apprentice and lover, Svetlana.

"I know," Jenny said, impossibly quietly.

"Arms dealers like him, they don't inspire _loyalty_ in their cronies," Gibbs said gruffly, lowering his voice. "His men wouldn't come after you, or me – they'd just take his place, take the money," he paused. "And they didn't know who the hell we were."

Jenny pointed at him shakily, her fingers half buried in the coat.

"Arms dealers," she reiterated sharply.

"We got out clean," Gibbs snapped, reiterating _that._

In a café in Amsterdam, he didn't understand why this was the topic of conversation – what it had to do with her letter, her 'eating crow,' her wanting him here – did she feel some sort of misplaced guilt, was she cracking? He grit his teeth, and started to speak – but then he looked at her, really looked at her, and he knew what she was going to say –

"I didn't kill her, Jethro."

The world faded to silence around him – and he sat there, stunned. Jen had been such a pro, so focused – so good at her job – and she sat here now, revealing that she hadn't made the kill; she had jeopardized them all –

"Decker know about this?" he asked icily.

"He does now," Jenny said quietly. "Morrow does, as well."

That explained the suspension – the secrecy, her virtual house arrest. Svetlana Chernetskaya was working with Islamic extremists, out for blood for the people who had taken her world from her.

"Jenny," he began, desperate.

"She was pregnant," Jenny said harshly. "NCIS seriously over-estimated her involvement in the arms ring. She wasn't innocent. She had blood on her hands. But what I was asked to do – "

"Your job – "

"The sheer brutality of it!" Jenny snapped, lurching forward and making a soft noise of pain in her throat – physical pain. "We watched Zhukov kill, maim – we watched him cheat, betray, brutalize, and rape – but all we knew about her was that she fucked him, and that she cleaned his money – and they asked me to look her in the eyes and gun her down."

Gibbs set his jaw tightly – he ignored the unrest her words caused; that's why he didn't let himself think when he made kills – it's why he just moved on. He unstuck his jaw after a long time and narrowed his eyes.

"You should have thought about this before you accepted the mission," he said tightly.

She nodded – her face pale. She knew that, she knew it more than anyone, especially now, while Morrow and Mossad scrambled to find her, to hunt her down and kill her, to tie up loose ends before Svetlana rooted out Gibbs' or Decker's identity.

"Her son is eighteen months old now," Jenny said tiredly. "And we killed his father."

She hadn't expected a reaction, but Gibbs visibly flinched, and he sat back and away from her. The words resonated hard – another father, dead at his hands; more blood, more family ripped apart

"Do you think one day, that little boy will come after the bastard who shot his father?" she asked quietly.

"He wouldn't," Gibbs said sharply, "if you'd killed his mother."

Jenny nodded.

"I should have," she agreed. "Svetlana isn't angry about the loss of an empire. She's a grieving widow," Jenny spat. "That's _worse_. Grief, thirst for revenge – it's worse. It's the force in the world that causes the most destruction, and the most vicious cycle of violence."

Gibbs sat still. He stared at her intently. He nodded, finally; he understood. In the back of his mind, in the darkest of nights, he wondered sometimes if what he had done in Mexico would exact karma on him with more suffering – and yet, he still lost no sleep over that kill shot.

"I may never be safe," Jenny said dully. "I know what I've done. When it became clear that my captors in Cairo were working with her – I had to read in Ziva – and Ziva is the soul of discretion. But after – my heart stopped, and I spent days near death – all of my choices in the past few years, everything suddenly – it was different; I got a different perspective."

She fell silent suddenly, and she seemed to struggle, like it was hard for her.

"I thought I was going to die, Jethro," she said, and her voice cracked. "It was painful, and it was bloody, and it was isolating. And I was dying with the knowledge that I'd leave you in the line of fire, and Decker, and the only thing you'd think of when you heard about me – would be that," she flicked violently at the letter, "that piece of _shit_."

She pushed her hair back, knocking her sunglasses off accidentally with a shaking hand – and she ignored them as they hit the concrete. She licked her lips slowly and took a breath, reaching down to touch her knee gingerly.

"I have nothing, and no one, and that is a _very_ difficult thing to live with."

He understood that, though not in the way she meant. He hadn't lost his family because he willfully shoved them out of his lives – although, a creeping voice told him he had done that to Steph, and to Diane – and to everyone who had tried to love him since. He ground his teeth together hard, trying to figure out everything she was saying – so she'd been hunted, by the woman she tried to spare – hunted, so Svetlana could find out who else had been there, and exact revenge for the loss of Zhukov – and once she rooted out the truth, the parallel of what Jenny and Gibbs had been in regards to Svetlana and Anatoly, Gibbs knew the Russian woman would slaughter Jenny right in front of him, and it wouldn't matter that she'd once been merciful.

And that – that would mean the death of Svetlana, because Gibbs would break her neck then and there, and that would leave a child to grow, to hate, and to hunt – all over again. Just like somewhere – he was sometimes sure the child of Pedro Hernandez was hunting him.

"You came clean to Morrow," Gibbs said slowly.

"Two days ago," Jenny said hoarsely. "Mossad needs more cooperation from the CIA and NCIS to track down the ties between Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and now Svetlana's ring – she had me distracted, a ruse with the French and the Irish, she knew I'd bite – "

"Personal, Jen?"

"One thing at a time," she said wearily, pleading.

Gibbs swallowed.

"She knows who you are?"

Jenny took a slow breath.

"She doesn't know the name Jenny Shepard," she said shakily. "That's why – neither you or Decker are in danger as of yet. She tracked me down – but she found my Mossad alias – it's an Irish cover – original, I know: IRA operative Saorsie Calumny. That's who she thinks I am."

"Saorsie," Gibbs said slowly, tasting the name – for lack of anything better to say.

Jenny smiled a little; it was nice to hear him say it. She pushed her cappuccino away – it was empty now – and she put her hands back in the coat he'd brought. She swallowed a few times, and lifted her shoulders.

"I'm not medically cleared," she said quietly. "I'm … not recovered, I'm not psychologically cleared, I can't shoot straight … I'm confined to a safe house here, protected by Eli David, on house arrest by Morrow – "

"You call me to warn me?"

"No," she said breathlessly, her lashes fluttering. Her lips shook nervously. "No. I … You have a right to know these things but I … it's not what I wanted to talk about – it's not – not really what I've been thinking about."

"What?" Gibbs asked tensely, impatiently. "What, Jen?" he leaned forward, and flipped his hands up, showing her his palms in exasperation, frustration. "I can't fix this. I can't do a damn thing to clean this up." He grit his teeth, and rubbed his jaw. "What the hell did you mean, you want to order a plate of crow?"

"I don't think I should have to explain that idiom to you," she said under her breath.

"I think you owe me a lot," he answered in a cool sort of tone, and her eyes snapped to his – surprised, taken aback, that he – Gibbs – was demanding an emotional connection: an explanation.

Her hands flatted on the table and she steeled herself.

"It means I was wrong," she said sharply. "It means I had the wrong priorities," she went on bluntly. "It means I want to take it back. It means," she paused, but her words were softening with each explanation. "It means I've been thinking about you. It means I do want _you_."

Without meaning to, he sat back hard, stunned. His hands fell into his lap listlessly, and he stared at her, eyes searching and fathomless. She tapped the letter while she had him distracted, and she crushed it in her hands.

"I wrote this because I was immature, and scared. I was focused on something … I can't talk about with you, until I get better, and I don't mean physically. I blamed you for every emotional gap between us, and I know now it wasn't all your fault – I mean, God, Jethro, you're infuriating, and you made it all so hard – but I was unfair, too. I was unwilling to try something healthy, to focus my energy on building something – between you and I – healing, instead of setting my sights on destruction."

Jenny licked her lips.

"I've been living my life wrong. I've been focused on the wrong things, I've been … shallow, and," she broke off, and then wrinkled the letter more.

"I didn't want to go. I convinced myself I had to. I convinced myself strong women – successful women – don't waste their time with men – and that was wrong. I don't want to be alone. I don't even want … to miss out on something, even if we never work at all … just because I was too stupid to try. I don't want the greatest love affair of my life to be an unfinished story because I didn't even try."

There was something earnest on her face, flushed and determined, like she was trying to force him to understand, and he just sat there – looking at her, looking at the crumbled letter in her hand – the letter that had made it easier for him to move on, because it made him so angry that she hadn't even given him a real chance – and maybe for her, it could have been different.

There was something in their souls that was similar – Jenny wasn't a woman he could have loved when he was young, but who he was back then was dead with Shannon and Kelly, and he'd seen something in Jenny that maybe he needed now.

He couldn't just – pick up, though. He couldn't trust her –

"'M not a charity case, Jen. You can't come askin' for what we had back because you had some damn near death thing. Can't throw yourself back at me because you think you're being punished for bein' ambitious."

"Haven't you been listening to what I'm saying?" she asked sharply, quietly. "This _isn't_ a guilt induced plea for absolution. I feel guilty for covering up my mistake in Paris. I feel guilty for being a coward. The actual act of leaving you – for that, I don't feel _guilty;_ I feel a very strong sense of regret, of failure. I was wrong." She closed her eyes. "What we had," she quoted his words. "I don't think I'm being punished. I don't think any divine power gives a damn what we had. But _I _do. You do. And _I_ threw it away. And _I_ was wrong."

Instinctively, he wanted to balk; he wanted to get up and walk away, rail at her for thinking that she could come crawling to him because she was hurt, and she might lose her job for this – NCIS would come down on her hard – and she was suddenly thinking she had to have someone to fall back on – but he sat there, letting her words bore into him, and he slowly understood that she was being sincere.

He started to understand that this wasn't about a sniveling Jenny wanting to be taken care of; Jen was never like that – she was genuine, she had been scared witless, she'd seen –proverbially – the light, and he was thinking he might have to start seeing it too, because if she was serious – he couldn't let this dissolve like it had with other women.

"You were right about me."

Her eyes were deep and soft as she looked at him, and he spoke gruffly, heavily, when he said it – he was thinking of what she'd written a couple years ago, how she'd judged him in her _Dear John_. He shrugged lightly, painfully.

"I can't do it," he snorted, defeated. In fights they'd had, in the words she'd written, she'd accused him of the inability to commit, open up, to feel. "'M getting' divorced again," he reminded her cynically.

She nodded; she'd heard it through the grapevine, and she'd been sorry to hear he'd gotten married again when she knew his heart wasn't in it when – arrogantly, but accurately – she knew she had what part of his heart he could give.

"You could try," she said simply. "Jethro," she began delicately, "I'm not asking for anything. I am just saying … I want to open the door I slammed shut – "

"I been _tryin'_, Jenny!" he burst out – and he sounded upset, really raw.

What did she think he was doing, getting married, if it wasn't _trying_? Trying to move on, trying to feel again, trying to do something, be something, have something other than an empty house and two gravestones with his world carved into them.

"With me," she amended softly. "I thought about myself a lot, Jethro, when I thought I was going to die. I thought about my mistakes, who I really am, who you are. I thought about the obstacles I have. I know there's something to you, that makes you how you are. I think I can be what you need."

He struggled, visibly before her eyes. His shoulders collapsed, his face was tired. She swallowed.

"I think we can find an equilibrium like Paris," she told him quietly. "If you can forgive me – I can live with not punishing you for whatever holds you back; I can live with understanding your limitations. I know you cared about me, Jethro, and I," she broke off, swore, and breathed out heavily. "I love you, and … I can't stop."

He nodded, once, thoughtfully, and then sharply. It was overwhelming, so much – but he wasn't thinking about Stephanie or his divorce or his past, he was thinking, briefly, of what she was offering – of trying.

"If it doesn't work … if we don't work … at least we'll know. But I don't think I can live … not knowing how it would have ended."

"I got thinks I can't talk about," he said hoarsely, abruptly. "Don't know if I ever can, even for you."

He meant Shannon, and he meant Kelly. He wanted to ask her if she'd just accept it, if she found out one day – but he couldn't talk about it at all, yet. He just couldn't.

She shrugged.

"Me too," she admitted.

It was that simple.

She still didn't know where she was on the subject of her father's death – but she knew now that if she killed for revenge, then she'd create a monster who would come after another person she loved, and she was tired of losing people – she was so tired of it – she knew she couldn't stop all the violence in the world – and she didn't necessarily want to – but she wanted to stop the personal violence that threatened to overtake her. She knew for sure that it had been stupid to sacrifice this relationship; greater women than her had possessed success and a man, and she was a fool to throw away someone like Jethro, particularly when it may have ruined him more than it had woken him up to his romantic feelings.

For a very long time, they looked at each other, as if all the words were soaking into their skin and bones.

Finally, he took a deep breath.

"Are you coming back?" he asked.

She understood what he meant, though the question was vague. She smiled a little grimly.

"I'm confined here indefinitely – until the situation is stabilized."

"If NCIS fires you?" he asked gruffly.

She smirked dully.

"It might be harder to become director."

He looked at her, incredulous.

"That's what you wanted?" he asked, taken aback.

"Not at all," she said softly.

He studied her, and then it made sense.

"You wanted the power," he guessed, and after a moment: "You were hunting someone."

She just gave him a small nod, and he did reach for her hand – he took it, and he held it tight, like he had one night during a thunderstorm that had made her nervous.

"They can all kill each other," she relented, giving up the fight for Rene Benoit – though Gibbs had no idea that's what she was doing. "I don't want any part of the slaughter."

"What next?" he asked.

He meant so much by it: what do we do in five minutes, what's next for us, for your job, what do we say to each other next – this was so completely insane to do, and yet he was going to do it, listen to her, try, forgive – it wasn't all just going to fall into place, but for a moment, it felt very straightforward and clean: for this moment, it felt simple.

"I'll think about that tomorrow," she said.

He thought it sounded familiar, and at the look on his face, she shrugged a little.

"It's a film quote," she said. "Book, too."

He snorted. She fell silent, and then she moved, wincing. She held his hand tightly, and he wondered if they would sit in this café all day – he thought so, because she seemed unwilling to move, listless, a little sick, and he could tell maybe she'd been into something medicinal since she'd been here, something to ease the pain and heartache.

"I should have listened to my heart a little more," she confessed, almost sheepishly.

He ran his fingers over her knuckles and leaned across the table, taking her face in his hand and pressing a soft, sort of forgiving, tentative kiss to her temple, just above a cut on her eyebrow.

When he sat back , he pulled her hand to his lips, and kissed the cuts on her knuckles, and he asked, neutrally –

"Why Amsterdam?"

She tilted her head back slightly, and licked her lips.

"I knew this was a huge risk," she whispered, "laying this all out for you."

He nodded, and she met his eyes, lifting one shoulder – and she didn't wince.

"So, it's Amsterdam," she said simply. "Anything goes."

He picked up his cappuccino, still holding her hand, and glanced behind him at the mellow canals – the bridges and towering old buildings, and he squinted in the sun – she was right; it would be worse to go on not knowing how they would have ended if they'd tried – and Amsterdam was a city that shouted – _try it._

And so, for her – he did.

* * *

_Amsterdam_  
_2001  
_

* * *

_so ... ?  
i might possibly maybe make this a series of them in different cities as they "try."  
[god it's so nice to write a story with no babies for once]_

_-Alexandra  
story #202_


End file.
